Yorkville Mariposa 63 65

I always wanted to be an Artist and I always approached life like an Artist, it just took me a very long time to figure out what an Artist was.

After getting out of the Navy I apprenticed as a silkscreen printer who had moved to Uxbridge making up to 12 colour decals for pottery. It was an arty sort of job and I learned very advanced screening but it paid very little and when he moved to Creemore and was happy to move on.  So I went to Toronto  and worked at a silkscreen company. The company was going down and I was promoted to a sales man I manged to get some work from Canada Dry and met a couple of their salesmen. I started spend a great deal of time at the Village Corner and the Yorkville folk scene. I really started here because of  school friend Muriel Frisque She hung out there when she was at College. I looked up a friend of hers John Smith and we became friends. John was from Nova Scotia and billed himself as the dirtiest Folksinger in Toronto and often sold out the Village Corner mostly sing songs off the Oscar Brand records - (I had all of them) Through John I met the 'Dirty Shames' Chick Roberts, Jim McCarthy Carole Robinson and Amos Garrett and many others on the folk scene .  I remember at a party with the Dirty Shames one night I went home and got some booze and went back to Carole's I think, A girl friend of hers came in from New York and we sat around while she sang a song she had picked up in New York. She sang 'Girl From the North country' and bowled us all over.

The Dirty Shames

Jim McArthy Carole Robinson Chick Roberts and Amos Garrett

Soon I was hanging out with Ken Danby at the Gate of Cleve when he did the Mariposa Folk Festival Poster. In this milieu I met Ed Cowan and Jack Wall and ended up as Assistant Food Manager at the 63 Mariposa Festival in Orillia.

 

I worked with Wally Cowan Ed's brother and we put together and supplied the several food booths that served the festival. I was staying at the crew motel as we set up the week before, and in the next room was the coolest guy I had ever met. he was from New York and did the lighting. We had a few beers together everyday. Chip had little round blue sunglasses and a young hippie wife with a baby and he knew everybody and was just cool. So the day before the show he is looking real sad and I ask why. he says he is leaving. he broke his most important light and it cost $150.00 and he didn't have enough to pay for it. I asked if he could get it in Orillia he said yes. So we went and bought it and I charged it to the Festival. So the show went on and saved his business. That cool guy was Chip Monck one of the principle founders of the Woodstock Festival.

One of our big sponsors was Canada Dry and their reps were the two guys I had met in the screen biz they were great and quick to buy dinners and drinks and I was friend with a couple of them for years. the week before the festival started I had a rented van and set up freezer space for tons of Frozen pizzas hamburger patties hotdogs etc.which I mostly brought from Toronto and organizing carpenters  building food booths and renting or buying stoves, coolers etc. Canada Dry was our pop supplier.

Somewhere in this I managed to back into the TR3 of lord Athol Layton the wrestler with our rented van. He did pull up in my blind spot( it took him about 5 years to find me to sign off the insurance)

 

Jack Wall and I think Ed Cowan moved into the motel room and I made a bed in the Van. It didn't matter much since I partied most nights anyway and  I found a neat girlfriend to share it with. the only problem was the baker delivered the fresh rolls to the van at 4 in the morning. The festival itself was a zoo. Wally and I split up managing the booths keeping them supplied and collecting the money. We were busy but I manged to catch some acts -

I remember the mayor of Orillia's introduction. "Last year I said the Town is Yours. This year we would like it back!"

The money rolled in from the booths so fast we ended up using my Volkswagen bug as a vault. Wally and I had keys and would pick up handfuls of cash and stuff it in the back of the car under a blanket.

I once went into the festival office to get some change and found Irving the accountant sitting at a desk counting by stacks of money. I surprised him and he pulled a gun on me. when he saw it was me he apologized and put it away.

When it was over I helped clean up and got half my pay and was told I would get a cheque for the rest. after no cheque for a couple of weeks and getting the run-around from Wally I went to fifth peg to see Jack Wall. he pleaded poor and offered me a week of free dinners and shows at the 5th Peg.

So I had a week of having dinner at the fifth peg often with John Lee Hooker as he performed to a very small crowd. he was there all that week. As it turned out Jack ripped off everybody at Mariposa he paid nobody. he didn't pay most performers, suppliers. I don't know how he did it, the fifth peg closed and he dropped out of sight.